Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2024/05/24/six-family-members-infected-with-brain-worms-after-chowing-down-on-bear-meat.html
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Explanation for my gif, spoilers for season one finale of Yellowjackets…
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He was hospitalized several times in less than three weeks, until doctors finally diagnosed him with trichinellosis.
Sounds close to trichinosis, which I remember being a danger of eating pork. Makes me think about the myth that pigs are related to bears. In this case, what they do have in common is an omnivorous diet.
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Do we no longer know what trichinosis is? Odd to use the more obscure name for the same thing and also odd to point out that freezing is not a way of avoiding it, because, yeah, ever heard of a meat called pork and how it used to be quite dangerous to undercook it?
EDIT: I guess you can kill the parasites by freezing but only in pork, not wild meat, according to the Mayo Clinic.
“Freezing pork that is less than 6 inches thick at 5 F (-15 C) for three weeks will kill the roundworm parasites. But roundworm parasites in wild-animal meat won’t die by freezing, even over a long period.”
I wonder why this only works for pork.
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There are too many options here:
That’s not what they meant by choose the bear!
In Soviet Russia, bear meat eats you!
The simple bear infectionings!
The choice paralysis is unbearable.
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Yikes. You really need to cook your game well, people. And things like pork/boar, especially.
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Hey… I didn’t even eat the mousse!
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Hmm. My favorite thing to order at Lidia’s Kansas City was always the wild boar ravioli. I may have to reconsider if I ever go back there. Not that I don’t trust them to cook it right, but…risk vs reward, ya know.
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For those who didn’t:
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I thought that Matt and Trey finally apologized to Al Gore for the whole ManBearPig thing.
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Dunno, but sometimes they inhabit the same ecosystem, as shown below.
Bears:
Pigs:
(from Stockholm Pride 2015)
Though, frankly, Swedish police are on average very far from the stereotypical “pig” - as their very participation to the SP hints.
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Scary…
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This sure was written confusingly.
6 people were infected.
3 of those didnt eat the meat only vegetables.
So how did the veggie only people get it?
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Cross contamination either during prep or the kebabs had both meat and veggies on them, I would guess.
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They’re both mammals, specifically artiodactyls. And there are a lot of parasites that cross through species in that order. But yes, bears and pigs aren’t all that closely related. Pigs are closer to other species in the clade Artiofabula; like giraffes, hippos, and whales.
Go back far enough and we’re all cousins. 
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He argues that humans are probably the result of multiple generations of backcrossing to chimpanzees, which in nucleotide sequence data comparisons would effectively mask any contribution from pig.
Love it. He’s the dumbest Ph.D and makes me feel better about not getting my degree. I perhaps merely lacked the will to put in the effort. (OK, now I don’t feel better)
Genetic analysis is sensitive enough that we’ve track down bits of virus particles that have made it into our genome. Chimp and pig DNA isn’t like mixing thyme and rosemary in your soup and being unable to taste the thyme because of too much rosemary.
Scientist can use genetics to compare species, looking for genetic markers common between say chimps and pigs, and find species without those markers, and begin to identify a theoretical common ancestor.
Where the chimp-pig hybrid hypothesis falls apart is we can also identify genetic markers in pigs that are not in chimps or humans. There are lots of very unique points in their respective genetic sequences that inform us of the order of common ancestors. From there we can reconstruct the branching of species and theoretical common ancestors.
If we have any pig DNA, it is because a virus picked them up and transferred them long ago, not because we or chimps crossbred with them.
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